SB 1070 – What Ignited Our Fire
In class, we spent time learning about
the Arizona Immigration Law, SB 1070. In
this law, the language used to describe immigrants who do not posses the proper
documentation includes term such as “illegal” and “aliens.” The purpose of the
law was to outline strong measures for law officials to take in order to seek
out and detain these undocumented immigrants. The Arizona SB 1070 law gives any
“law enforcement officer” the authority to stop anyone they think could be an
undocumented immigrant. This is a change from previous legislation, which only gave
ICE officers the authority to make such stops and arrests, and putting a lot
more power and control in the hands of regular police officers.
Is this law good or bad? Well, I believe that it’s bad. The law “requires a reasonable attempt to be made to
determine the immigration status of a person…if reasonable suspicion exists
that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S” (Fact Sheet
2). Reasonable suspicion? What could possibly make a police officer suspect a
person to be an undocumented immigrant? It would take some sort of
racial/ethnic profiling for reasonable suspicion to take place. Maybe they
heard the person talk with an accent, or maybe they just saw the color of their
skin, but either way, “reasonable suspicion” sounds like racial profiling. And
if this is true, then putting the power to racially profile in the hands of
everyday police officers, which aren’t trained to deal with immigration issues,
is a dangerous act indeed. It is basically allowing for discrimination based on
skin color to be legal.
While the laws gave our class much to
think about and discuss, the language used in the laws provoked a heated
discussion. The law describes all immigrants as “aliens” throughout, and often
refers to them as “illegal aliens.” There is a lot of weight behind this
terminology. Many members and allies of the immigrant community, myself
included, find terms such as “illegal immigrant” and “alien” to be
dehumanizing, offensive, and discriminatory. Drugs are illegal; murder is
illegal; acts and objects can be illegal, not people. As
Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor said, “No
human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be
beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be wrong or
right, but illegal? How can a human be illegal?” (more info here)
I do not argue that the act of entering the United States
without inspection breaks the law. Many people break different laws every day.
Every weekend, hundreds of students will consume alcohol while underage, but
they are not labeled “illegal people.” The very idea of calling anyone who
drinks underage an “illegal” is absurd. Why, then, would it be okay to call a
person without a visa or a passport, an “illegal?” Calling immigrants without
papers “illegal immigrants” is wrong because it implies that the person’s very existence is against the law. This
brings me to our mission statement.
Mission Statement
Immigration:
Alien vs. Citizen is a
blog created to educate readers about the negative effects of using certain
terminology about immigration on society. Our mission is to use a variety of
articles, surveys, videos, and analysis to show immigrants have become "others" in society as a result of words like “illegal,” and
“alien,” and how these terms
perpetuate oppression against an entire group of people.
Because we value
justice, fairness, and equality, we hope our blog will illuminate the
controversies surrounding terminology about immigration, and will help promote a
society in which all people, no matter their race or immigration status, are
treated with human dignity and respect.
